Limburg (, ; or ; , ), also known as Belgian Limburg, is a province in Belgium. It is the easternmost of the five Dutch-speaking provinces that together form the Region of Flanders, which is one of the three main political and cultural sub-divisions of modern-day Belgium. As of January 2024, Limburg had a population of 0.9 million.
Limburg is located west of the Meuse (), which separates it from the similarly named Dutch province of Limburg. To the south it shares a border with the French-speaking province of Liège, with which it also has historical ties. To the north and west are the old territories of the Duchy of Brabant. Today these are the Flemish provinces of Flemish Brabant and Antwerp to the west, and the Dutch province of North Brabant to the north. Historically Belgian Limburg is roughly equivalent to the Dutch-speaking part of the secular lordship of the medieval Prince-Bishopric of Liège, which was dominated by the County of Loon.
The province of Limburg has an area of which comprises three arrondissements (arrondissementen in Dutch) containing 44 municipalities. Among these municipalities are the current capital Hasselt, and other large towns including Sint-Truiden, Genk, and Tongeren. Tongeren is the only Roman city in the province, and regarded as the oldest city of Belgium.
The municipality of Voeren is geographically detached from Limburg and the rest of Flanders, with the Netherlands to the north and the Walloon province of Liège to the south. This municipality was established by the municipal reform of 1977, and on 1 January 2008, with its six villages, it had a total population of 4,207. Its total area is .
Name The name Limburg was not applied to the territory of Belgian Limburg until the 19th century. Instead, the territory broadly coincides with that of the medieval County of Loon, which was one of the main parts of the Prince-bishopric of Liège. In the late-18th century, following the French Revolution and the subsequent French Campaign in the Low Countries, the region became part of the newly created Lower Meuse Department of the French First Republic (later the First French Empire), along with a significant part of what would become Dutch Limburg.
After the defeat of the French empire and the Congress of Vienna in 1815, this department was reconstituted into the Province of Limburg as part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The new name had its own medieval history, being associated with the extinct Duchy of Limburg, which had its capital at nearby Limbourg-sur-Vesdre, now in the French-speaking Belgian province of Liège. The new Dutch monarchy chose this name because it desired to recreate the prestigious old title in a new Duchy of Limburg.
Because of the Belgian revolution in 1830, this province of Limburg was divided in 1839 by the Treaty of London; the western portion being recognised as a province of the newly formed Kingdom of Belgium, while the eastern portion remained part of the Netherlands as the modern Dutch Province of Limburg. Both parts retained the name they had been given by the Dutch monarchy after the defeat of France.
History
The first wave of people who brought farming and pottery technology from the Middle East to northern Europe was the LBK culture, which originated in central Europe and had its roots in south-eastern Europe. It reached its geographical limit in the fertile southern Haspengouw part of Limburg about 5000 BC, only to die out about 4000 BC. A later wave of farmers, the Michelsburg culture which developed in what is now France, arrived about 3500 BC, but shared a similar fate. Pottery technology had however apparently been taken up by local tribes of the Swifterbant culture, who remained present throughout.
The area became permanently agricultural only in the Bronze Age with the Urnfield culture around 1200 BC, followed by the possibly related Halstatt and La Tène material cultures, which are generally associated with Celts. Under these cultures the population increased in the region, and it is also during this period that Indo-European languages are thought to have arrived. These new technologies and languages entered Europe from the direction of Ukraine and southern Russia around 2000 BC. This migration had a similar impact across the continent.
Caesar gave the first surviving written description of the area around 55 BC and described its people as the Germani cisrhenani. He described them as allies of the Belgae and Treveri, and reported that they had ancestral links with their neighbours on the east side of the Rhine. Somewhat earlier, we know from surviving fragments of his work that Poseidonius had already mentioned these same Germani, saying that they roasted meat in separate joints, and drank milk and unmixed wine.Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, Book 4 reports the description of Poseidonius. Caesar noted several peoples within the Germani group, the most important of which were the Eburones who fought against Julius Caesar under their leaders Ambiorix and Cativolcus. Apart from the Germani, somewhere to the west of the Eburones (possibly outside Limburg) were the Aduatuci, who Caesar reported to be the descendants of the Cimbri and Teutones who had migrated around Europe some generations before Caesar.
Under Roman imperial rule, the area around Limburg was the "city" (civitas) of the Tungri. Tacitus reported that these Tungri were the same as the earlier Germani cisrhenani, and noted that the use of the name "Germani" had been expanded in Roman times to cover many peoples in Germany east of the Rhine. The Tungri are generally accepted to have been speakers of a Germanic language, but modern historians disagree over the extent to which they descend from new immigrants who came from over the Rhine after Caesar. Notably, the Tungri participated on the Roman side in the revolt of the Batavi against Roman rule, which was a major event in this region in 69 AD. To the north of Limburg during Roman times lived the Texandri.
The site of the fort where Caesar's soldiers encamped was called Aduatuca. This was apparently a general word for a fort, associated not only with the Eburones, but also the Aduatuci, and the later Tungri. The Roman city established in Belgian Limburg was referred to as Aduatuca Tungrorum meaning "Aduatuca of the Tungri". Today this has become "Tongeren", in the southeast of Belgian Limburg, and it was the capital of a Roman administrative region called the "Civitas Tungrorum". Under the Romans, the Tungri civitas was initially a part of Gallia Belgica. However, it was later split out with the more militarized border regions towards the Rhine, to become Germania Inferior, which was later converted into Germania Secunda.
In late Roman and early medieval times, the northern or "Kempen" part of Belgian Limburg became depopulated and uncultivated. This area, still known then by its Roman name as Texandria, was settled by incoming Salian Franks from the north, who were under pressure from Saxons. The southern or "Haspengouw" part of Belgian Limburg was an important agricultural region and remained more heavily Romanised, and eventually became a core land of the Frankish empires.
Middle Ages
By the 9th century, the Frankish Carolingian dynasty, who had lands in and around Belgian Limburg, ruled an empire that included much of Western Europe. The Franks originally had several smaller kingdoms ruling each of the old Roman civitates ("cities"), but under the Merovingians one empire formed, which was divided each generation among family members. In the period around 881 and 882 the areas along the Maas and in the Haspengouw were plundered by Vikings, who established a base on the Maas river. Early Christianity was established first in the Romanised southern parts of Limburg, around Tongeren, and missionaries went north from there to convert the Franks. The church capital moved from the Roman capital Tongeren to nearby Maastricht, and then Liège. This was the area of activity of St Servatius, and later, Lambert of Maastricht.
Limburg was part of the central Austrasian kingdom of the Franks which lay between the parts which would become France and Germany. The divisions of the Frankish empire were eventually fixed in the 9th century when this Middle Kingdom came to be known as Lotharingia after its first king, Lothair II. During the 10th century the region slowly came under the permanent control of Eastern Francia, which was to become the Holy Roman Empire. Under the Ottonians the archbishops became responsible for a very large territory stretching up to the delta of the river Maas. Another early saint in the south of Limburg was St Trudo, whose name survives in one of the major towns in southern Limburg, Saint Truiden.
Belgian Limburg corresponds closely to the medieval territory of the County of Loon (French Looz) which starts to appear in records only in the 11th century. This county originally centred on the fortified town of Borgloon, which was originally simply known as Loon. Although the exact details are unclear today, from an early time Loon was subservient, not only spiritually but also politically, to the powerful Prince-Bishopric of Liège. When the male line of the counts ended with Louis IV in 1336, the bishops began to take direct control, and the last claimant to that inheritance, Arnold of Rumigny, count of Chiny gave up his claim.
Modern history
Loon, and the rest of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, were not joined politically with the rest of what would become Belgium until the French Revolution. Nevertheless, in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries the population of Loon was constantly and badly affected by the large-scale international wars of the neighbouring Spanish Netherlands and Dutch Republic, including the Eighty Years' War, the Nine Years' War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years' War, and even the Brabant Revolution. During this period the region's episcopal government was often unable to maintain law and order, and the economy of the area was often desperately bad, affected by plundering soldiers and gangs of thieves such as the "Bokkenrijders". Nevertheless, the population contained strongly conservative Catholic elements, and not only supported the conservative Brabant revolution, but also rebelled unsuccessfully against the revolutionary French regime in the Peasants' War of 1798.
The modern Limburg region, containing the Belgian and Dutch provinces of that name, were first united within one province while under the power of revolutionary France, and later the Napoleonic empire, but then under the name of the French department of the Lower Meuse (Maas). After Napoleon's defeat, a united Kingdom of the Netherlands was formed, containing modern Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. While it kept many of the French provincial boundaries, the first king, William I, insisted that the name be changed to the "Province of Limburg", based on the name of the medieval Duchy of Limburg. The only part of Belgian or Dutch Limburg which was really in the Duchy of Limburg is the extreme east of Voeren, the villages of Teuven and Remersdaal, and these only became part of Belgian Limburg in 1977.
After the Belgian Revolution of 1830, the province of Limburg was at first almost entirely under Belgian rule, but the status of both Limburg and Luxembourg became unclear. During the "Ten days campaign", 2–12 August 1831, Dutch armies entered Belgium and took control of several Belgian cities in order to negotiate from a stronger position. Several Belgian militias and armies were easily defeated including the Belgian Army of the Meuse near Hasselt, on 8 August. The French and British intervened, leading to a ceasefire.